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"When should we trust our senses to give us truth?"


CellarDoor

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You're helps here are really great, I'm just writung the verz same essay, but my teacher doesn't want to talk with use about it because 80% of the class choose the question with the sences.

For others you want to write about this topic you should include the names of Benjamin and Brown. They have some great things to say about the trustability of sences.

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  • 2 weeks later...
You're helps here are really great, I'm just writung the verz same essay, but my teacher doesn't want to talk with use about it because 80% of the class choose the question with the sences.

For others you want to write about this topic you should include the names of Benjamin and Brown. They have some great things to say about the trustability of sences.

I'm doing this topic as well. I hate writing essays on stuff this abstract. What are some knowledge issues related to this topic? Thanks.

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How would you tackle the following prescribed ToK title?

"When should we trust our senses to give us truth?"

I'm quite stuck with what examples should be used. I'm a scientific kind of person and can only think of examples in the areas of chemistry and physics. Which other examples could I use? Presently, I believe that our senses will always give us truth, but I am also having trouble in finding counter-claims.

I'm not sure how to start the essay and I'm also afraid I will end up answering whether we should use our senses, instead of when. How can I avoid this slip?

I would appreciate any help.

Thanks

i did mine on the same topic and i just handed it to my teacher... mention some physcis examples as u mentioned.. such as lack of eye sensitivity, eye's radiant flux. also, use the interpretations of a blind person of the outside world... ummm... error in smell of a certain food, error in reallizing who's talking on the other side of the telephone.... voices with low frequency cant be heard, and lastly what you may sense may not be the only event happening

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I think one big way of knowing to talk about in this title would be perception - and the problems with perception, how perception are subjective/biased? and can be deceived. But as you said it's important to focus on the WHEN of perception, not the WHETHER.

dear leia..

im just wanna make some point regarding on wut have been u said about perception..btway, i've submitted my 1st draft tok essay and i've included certain point related bout sense perception.however, my tok teachr has rejectd it due to misconception. frm wut my teachr said, sense perception is totally different wif sense. the sense is all about five human senses..nt related to perception. yes,u cn relate a bit bout perception..but when we refer to the ques given..that sense jst refer to 5 senses..

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this thread just reminded me of somthign funny happened a whil ago....

i consulted my teacher with the same topic, the example he gave me was

do you see what's outside ? (a student)

how do you know that she's really there? (i can see her)

how do you know that it's not an illusion? (i can go and touch)

*no answer*

i don'\t know if this helps, but it may give an idea...this is what i can see from the surface, not deep analysis

thats a nice example u knw:p..i read it like 4 times now....its so simple and almost summarizes everything... :D ...

but wht do u mean by *no answer*?....

(i knw this is waaaay too late:P..lol...but im just starting my essay now:D)

thnx again!

Edited by mahuta
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i did mine on the same topic and i just handed it to my teacher... mention some physcis examples as u mentioned.. such as lack of eye sensitivity, eye's radiant flux. also, use the interpretations of a blind person of the outside world... ummm... error in smell of a certain food, error in reallizing who's talking on the other side of the telephone.... voices with low frequency cant be heard, and lastly what you may sense may not be the only event happening

this is for everyone:D..

you could also consider color blindness...for example if a color blind person only sees shades of green....they see a tomato..as green....could u go up to them and say..."no...you're wrong..thts not true..tomatoes are red"...?!?! u cant..cuz thts all they "know"

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hey all ur posts are great, but can perception and emotion be considered as senses as well? I know they are WOK's but can i call them senses? Im confused!!!

Thanx

heys....no...not really...because my TOK teacher was like the senses they mean here are the five senses(sight...touch...etc..etc)....not senses like emotion and perception

<3:)..goodluck

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Well, there are two sides to this debate, one, we only percieve through our senses, which are fallible, and therefore we have no way of knowing anything but that we exist and that we think. This is the descartes method, and is essentially stating that since you can concieve a world in which we exist only as brains, and since you cannot prove that this is not the case, then you cannot know anything, since there is a chance that we are brains in a vat.

The Empiricist argument is that although we cannot fully trust what we percieve, if life is based entirely on what happens to our perceptions, then the only truth we need is what we can percieve. Essentially, we may be brains in vats in the matrix, but our lives are just as meaningful if they are fake as they are when they're real, and because of that, all we have to do is react to our senses as if they were the absolute truth. The Empirical theory is quite materialistic and atheist, because it takes on a Nihilistic view of life, in which all that matters is what is percieved, and that things that you don't experience don't matter. The rationalist argument is more dualist in nature, because it implies a separation between mind and body that cannot be overcome by anything.

I, and everyone else here, would appreciate it if you posted factual information. The empiricist argument DOES NOT argue that we cannot trust our perceptions. Here is a quote from a website:

"In philosophy, empiricism is a theory of knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from experience. Empiricism is one of several competing views about how we know things, part of the branch of philosophy called epistemology, or "theory of knowledge". Empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas (except in so far as these might be inferred from empirical reasoning, as in the case of genetic predisposition).[1]

In the philosophy of science, empiricism emphasizes those aspects of scientific knowledge that are closely related to evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world, rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation. Hence, science is considered to be methodologically empirical in nature."

If you don't know what you're talking about, don't screw everyone else over and post what you THINK MIGHT BE CORRECT. For all you know, someone wrote in their essay that "we cannot fully trust what we percieve" as a feature of the empiricist argument, which is incorrect.

Edited by starsoccerkid
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If you don't know what you're talking about, don't screw everyone else over and post what you THINK MIGHT BE CORRECT. For all you know, someone wrote in their essay that "we cannot fully trust what we percieve" as a feature of the empiricist argument, which is incorrect.

That's the wrong attitude to take, especially in something like TOK. In Theory of Knowledge, nothing is incorrect as long as it can be backed up with relevant and accurate information. TOK is the "theory" of knowledge which means its basically a lot of people bull****ting very articulately. So anyone's bull**** is as good as yours so hush next time you want to put someone down for merely offering up an idea.

Now, back to the topic at hand, the angle i took at the beginning of my essay was looking at what truth is. So, basically i looked up what the definition for "truth" is in the dictionary; the dictionary stated that truth is "the state or quality of being either true or factual". Therefore, I deduced that something truthful is the same as something factual, and, as everyone knows, for something to become a fact, it must first be proven to be correct. Thus for something to be "truth" it must also be proven, 'so when can we trust our senses to give us truth' I hear you cry! Never, is my answer. Our senses give us an unproven theory of the world around us, they may coincidentally give us something that is true, but it is not the truth until it is proven to be so.

An example for this is:

Someone is buried beneath the snow in an avalanche. Many people in this situation dig the direction they believe to be 'up' but end up digging themselves further into the snow. This is because their senses are giving them feedback that is infact incorrect. So, if that person had merely spat, or melted the snow and seen which direction the water drops, they could have proven which direction is 'up' and therefore escape their perilous situation.

Now, this might all be a pile of horse ****, but I've got it fairly wedged into my head that our senses cannot give us truth. How can I argue the opposite?

Thanks :P

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I, and everyone else here, would appreciate it if you posted factual information. The empiricist argument DOES NOT argue that we cannot trust our perceptions. Here is a quote from a website:

---

If you don't know what you're talking about, don't screw everyone else over and post what you THINK MIGHT BE CORRECT. For all you know, someone wrote in their essay that "we cannot fully trust what we percieve" as a feature of the empiricist argument, which is incorrect.

You completely misread what he was saying. Completely.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I noticed a lot of people defining truth and/or senses, my teacher says that is probably the worst thing u can do "filling your essay up with definitions and using up the words available, you assume that your teacher knows all those things"...so heads up fellas...

*Mod Edit*- WE WILL NOT DO YOUR WORK FOR YOU ~ :rofl:

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I did that question too, and I used the Theory of Knowledge text book by Nicholas Alchin (my TOK teacher said he's the chief examiner or something). If you want to take a look, you can download the particular relevant chapter (Chapter 10: Empiricism - the Use of the Senses) here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/164583151/silv_TOK_empiricism.rar

Hi.

This chapter really helped me a lot, but i can't find the information about publishing year and place, so that i can use it as a reference. Can anyone help me?

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  • 2 weeks later...
Hi.

This chapter really helped me a lot, but i can't find the information about publishing year and place, so that i can use it as a reference. Can anyone help me?

First edition published in 2003 by Hodder Murray, an imprint of Hodder Education and a member of the Hodder Headline Group, an Hachette Livre UK Company

Hope that is what you need.

Hmm, my TOK Essay with the same topic is due this friday. And I'm just starting with it o_O

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Hey everyone,

i'm new at ib survival and am just posting to thank you guys for just how ridiculously helpful this forum was and add in some of my views on the q. I just did this essay after going through the info you guys gave (my first one for ToK mind) and got myself a 38/40!!!

Heres what I did:

In the first para of my intor, i just basically talked about how important and how reliant we are on our senses, particularly focusing on our that senses are not just there to help us with indepth knowledge such as matters of reality and existence, but that at their most fundamental, they help give us truth in terms of our surroundings and the world. I threw in some examples i.e if, say, we see a crazy dude running at us with a knife, then we run.

In the second para i said basically that though we see the world through our senses, they can be very easily decieved. gave examples of the intelligence industry and magic shows where their carrers are based on the deception and evasion of our senses. ended the para by saying that, basically, without reasoning the info we get from our senses, we cannot get truth.

In the third, i discussed the senses by alluding them to security devices such as cameras and motion sensors. they only give as one angle of the situation and this can be misleading i.e.a lizard setting of a motion sensor leading us to believe that there is a burglar. however, if both senses work together and we see the burglar through the camera as he sets off the motion sensor then we get far more accurate a picture. In short, if two or more senses dont work in conjunction, we would be hard pressed to find truth. Also i added in that we must interpret the pictures to get truth, wherin lies the application of reason.

Next i went on to say that even if we do all this, we still may not get the truth. talked on how emotions can effect truth and how different people can have different truths i.e. a person who likes vanilla cake will see it as delicious while to someone who hates it it will look disgusting.

Next i talked about how even though senses have all these problems, without them we would have nothing so they are integral to our areas and ways of knowing. talked about how we need our senses in science experiments to recognize and record the data and the other areas as well i.e. read the question in math.

Finally, second to last para, i reiterated that our senses are fallible and there are somethings we cant sense e.g. certain wavelengths we cant hear or see. Also about how art decieves the eye and though we know it is jus lines on a canvas our senses interpret it as something else, i.e. drawing in perspective

In the end i concluded by saying that we should not completely trust our senses unless they have evidence. they still might fail but we dont really have any choice for without them we have no outlook on the world. last line of my essay: "We must take solace in the fact that we exist and we think and since we have no way of proving to the contrary to our current perceptions of the world, we may as well follow them and rejoice in the futility of our attempts to decipher truth and create understanding of our physical world."

love that line.

Essay length was 1300 words

Hope this helps whoever else needs to write the essay. Thanks guys who posted before again.

P.S.

General things to do and not do:

do use examples for every point. make them personal as well.

dont waste too much time on definitions. you should keep it short if you really really want to. for this essay the only relevant one was plato's definition of truth.

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I noticed a lot of people defining truth and/or senses, my teacher says that is probably the worst thing u can do "filling your essay up with definitions and using up the words available, you assume that your teacher knows all those things"...so heads up fellas...

I don't really agree with you there, I think you should still define truth and senses because everyone would have a different understanding of it and it's also practically the basis for your entire essay. Without defining it, first of all your arguments will lack a certain coherence and in some cases without your own definiation the examiner could end up reading your essay with his or her understanding of senses and truth which may no necessarily coincide with your ideas. As for using up the words available, you should be able to define both, short and efficiently in a sentence or 2.

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I don't really agree with you there, I think you should still define truth and senses because everyone would have a different understanding of it and it's also practically the basis for your entire essay. Without defining it, first of all your arguments will lack a certain coherence and in some cases without your own definiation the examiner could end up reading your essay with his or her understanding of senses and truth which may no necessarily coincide with your ideas. As for using up the words available, you should be able to define both, short and efficiently in a sentence or 2.

Sorry if i mislead. i suppose it can vary from examiner to examiner, but the person who marked my one told us to avoid them mostly as we were to assume that they (the examiners) know the general definitions. as per stating that truth is different from person to person, that is indeed a major part of my essay in justifying that an absolute truth cannot be determined. that i did mention...many times. in the intro i made short mention of truth in terms of the awareness of our physical surroundings as its most fundamental form and thats another important thing. hope im clearer. And i did quickly mention plato's def.of truth.

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